


My Graceless Heart

by the_moonmoth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Author Commentary, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-03 14:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life was not a song, but she had started to believe that Sandor could be her unlikely champion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lovely and generous **lunar_art** , who was the winning bidder in the [fandom_helps](http://fandom-helps.dreamwidth.org/) charity auction in aid of Planned Parenthood from a couple of months ago. She asked for future fic in which Sandor says something typically Sandorish, and Sansa snaps and hits him. This fic deals with the aftermath of a rape, and Sandor is not a character well equipped to handle that kind of situation. I have tried to keep him in character while not making him into a complete dick. Some readers may find some of his reactions unacceptable – please bear that in mind when deciding whether or not to read. And please feel free to PM me for more info if you want it. Many thanks to **ownsariver** for her razor-sharp beta. Title from [Shake It Out](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbN0nX61rIs&ob=av2e) by Florence & the Machine.
> 
> Comments feed the author :)

“What are you doing?”

The words were annoyed, growled at her from across the small campfire, and when Sansa looked up his eyes were a stony grey.

“Mending your tunic,” she said softly, taken aback. “As I can’t cook or hunt, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m to stay away from the horses, there really is nothing else I can do to help.”

Sandor snorted and turned away, ducking down as he went to the back of the cave where the ceiling was low before returning with his whetstone. “Your job isn’t to _help_ , girl. Your job is to sit quietly and look pretty until I can deliver you safely back to your uncle Blackfish.”

Sansa blinked, stung. She had not _been_ Sansa again until five days ago, when Sandor Clegane had appeared at her wedding and whisked her away in the confusion. Alayne was well accustomed to being useful, and the reminder that Sansa was supposed to be a lady – and therefore ultimately useless – was strangely unwelcome.

“I... I’m sorry if I have offended you,” she tried. “I was merely trying to find a way to express my thanks for all you have done for me.”

Sansa frowned uncertainly; she couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. She remembered well enough that he had not always spoken gently to her, of course, but that had been before. Since he had rescued her from Littlefinger and Harry the Heir, Sandor had actually been quite nice to her – as nice as he was ever like to get, at the least – making her as comfortable as he could both on horseback and when they stopped to camp, conversing with her pleasantly enough about where he had been since they last saw one another. Oh he was still blunt as a tourney sword, his language as coarse as ever, but the bitterness that had once made his eyes so terrifying to look upon, the _meanness_ he had sometimes been wont to throw at her, had gone. So why was he suddenly being so prickly?

One of the first things he had said to her – as she had retreated behind a gorse bush to change out of her wedding gown, his broad back just a few feet away – was that the Hound was dead, and Sansa had been rather pleased for the changes it had wrought in him. Why, he was not nearly so frightening as she had once thought, that bitterness and rage in his eyes replaced with small glimpses of something Sansa might have been tempted to call warmth, in another man. And after he had fastened his cloak about her shoulders that first night when a fire was too great a risk, Sansa had even begun to wonder if it was normal to find such horrific burn scars... appealing. There must be a reason she had dreamt of him all these years, after all.

But now he was staring at her in something that looked like irritation, the burned side of his mouth twitching so that it looked as though he was sneering at her, and it made her want to shrink away like the scared child she had once been.

“Express your thanks? You’re still just a stupid little bird, aren’t you?”

Sansa’s breath froze in her throat. He had not spoken to her like that since King’s Landing. It was almost as if he had heard her thoughts. _But how could he have?_ She remembered all at once that he had often seemed to possess an uncanny ability to peer inside her head and see what she was about. Funny how some of those memories only came bubbling to the surface when faced with him again, for all the time she had spent thinking on him. She saw herself for a moment as if from above – more like a dream than a memory – a small, frightened girl standing before her king in the practice yard as he held a loaded crossbow to her face and jeered at her dumbstruck responses.

Blinking the strange vision away, Sansa glanced up at his face as Sandor sat down across the fire from her. His eyes seemed to glitter in the firelight. _In anger?_ Was he glaring at her? His words rang in her head, _stupid little bird._ She felt pinned, a butterfly in Robert’s collection. Stripped bare as Joffrey had once made her. No one had ever called Alayne stupid. _Ever_. But she was Sansa again now, and Sansa had never been anything more than a frightened, naïve little pawn, used by everyone for their own gain and too stupid to see it until it was too late.

 _I’m sorry._ She could feel the words forming on her tongue, tight and small, a distantly familiar reflex. But then she frowned and clamped her jaw down on them, straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and stared at him coolly.

“Please don’t call me stupid,” she said. “If you don’t want me to mend your clothes, that is all you need say.”

“Whatever you say, _my lady_ ,” Sandor snorted again, looking darkly amused, and started scraping at his sword with the whetstone, shaking his head. Sansa laid her sewing down and watched him, waiting. For what, she did not know, but the longer she waited the emptier she felt. He had smiled at her last night as the hare had roasted on the spit, and it had made her feel warm from top to toe. He had ridden back into her life and taken her away from her captors and she had tried to remind herself that life was not a song but the whole thing had been so like something from one of the stories she had once loved that she had truly started to believe... _wanted_ to believe...

And hadn’t she suffered enough? Tormented by Joffrey, forced into marriage not once but twice, forced to accept… all manner of indignities at Petyr’s hands. Forced to lie still and quiet and not cry. Forced to endure his fury, rising up like a storm, when all she _would_ do was lie still and quiet and not cry, and failed utterly to be Catelyn Tully. _You stupid girl, you are nothing like her._ Life was not a song, but she had started to believe that Sandor could be her unlikely champion.

 _Did I misjudge him? Did I misjudge everything?_ She was sixteen now, a woman grown and well-educated, not the stupid child who had fled King’s Landing by putting her life in the hands of a fool. And yet... she was Sansa again, and Alayne no longer, and perhaps it had always been Alayne who was clever and brave and not Sansa at all. Petyr had always made her be Sansa in bed, after all. He must have realised that she was the weak one. The _only_ thing Sansa had in her favour was that she was a lady, and what good was that when her champion thought her just as worthless as her tormentors had?

“Why are you ruining it?” she whispered, voice so small it was lost under the _scape, scrape_ of the whetstone. Unbidden, her eyes filled with tears, and that made her angry. _I really am just a stupid little bird, stupid little Sansa, good for nothing but looking pretty and providing some man with a claim to my home._ She stood abruptly and walked to the mouth of the cave, desperate to fill her lungs with clean night air, to get away, _away_.

Iron fingers caught her by the wrist and forced her around, and a deep voice rasped at her, “Where do you think you’re going?”

 _Away, away from you._ “I need to make water,” she muttered, turning her face so that he would not see her tears.

He did not release her, but reached up with his free hand to grip her chin and turn her face up to his. Just as if she was still that stupid little girl, trapped amongst her enemies in King’s Landing.

“ _Release me,_ ” she hissed, filled with a sudden rage, a rage that was only fuelled by her humiliation when the tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks, Sandor watching their progress with a blank expression. For a moment she thought that he would not heed her, but then he let her go all at once as though burned, mouth twitching.

She stepped back from him, his overwhelming nearness, before spinning away and striding towards the trees with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Don’t go far,” he rasped, and the slight hint of confusion and concern in his voice made her turn right back, propelled by a red wave of fury. How _dare_ he? How _dare_ he act the gallant once more, worrying over her safety, after the way he had just spoken to her – did he think she was _stupid?_ Yes of course he did! He’d said so himself, had he not? _You’re still just a stupid little bird, aren’t you?_

“Little bird-” he began as she approached him once more, frowning slightly, and it was too much. Sansa struck him, putting everything into it, the palm of her hand landing hard across his good cheek. And when that did not appease the fire in her chest she struck him again.

He stood rooted to the spot, not even moving to stop her, staring at her with a queer expression on his face, and Sansa stared right back, boiling with fury and panting from the exertion, her hand stinging. His cheek had turned a livid pink from her blows, she saw, with a savage satisfaction she had never felt before.

“I am not your _little bird,_ ” she said, voice soft but filled with contempt. And then, when that still did not feel good enough, “I hate you.”

*

Sandor stood and watched her stride away into the trees for the second time, stunned into inaction. He had been on the receiving end of many an insult in his time, foul names his opponents had flung at him, the sneering of whores. But the look in his little bird’s eyes as she had struck him, the calm, cold tone of her voice as she told him with the utmost sincerity that she hated him, and the way some deep part of him had clenched in fear and panic at her words... that experience was entirely foreign before now.

The skin of his cheek prickled with heat in the cold night air, a shadow of where her hand had been. He fancied he could feel the line each long finger had left on his face. Had a woman ever struck him before? Brienne, of course, though she barely counted; Cersei, before he had learnt to guard his tongue and keep his opinions to himself. But the touch that was burned most brightly into his memory was the timid comfort offered by a girl on the worst night of his life, a girl who had somehow looked beyond the knife he had held to her throat, and given him her compassion. The same girl who had no doubt left a red mark in the exact same place she had touched him then, as though burning away the tenderness of that memory. The same girl who had just now looked at him with such loathing as she took back the faint glimpse of absolution he had fought through the last four years to have a second chance at earning.

And what had he done, exactly? He was tired from the day’s riding, hungry from the meagre dinner he had been able to provide, and the sight of her sitting there mending his things, a small smile on her face as she hummed quietly to herself, had made him short with her. It was too close. Too close to the hopeless fantasies he had been entertaining ever since he saw the look of relief on her face in that brief, unguarded moment when he’d first broken into her chambers. Too close, and too far away, and so very fucking bitter. But he had said worse in King’s Landing, and if she had held _that_ against him he did not think she would have been so happy to see him back at the Gates of the Moon. _Aye, but was she truly, dog? Remember the bread riots? She was happy to see you then, too. Wasn’t really you, though, was it? She would have been happy to see the headless ghost of her dead father if it meant escaping Lollys Stokeworth’s fate._ Gratitude was not the same as... whatever it was he had come here to get from her (Elder Brother had called it redemption; the Blackfish honour; Brienne had looked through him with those enormous blue eyes and named it forgiveness). Yet gratitude had been given nonetheless, and it had galled him for not being the other.

 _The Hound may be dead, but I am still nothing more than a cringing dog_ , he told himself. _I don’t deserve her forgiveness merely for bringing myself up to the lowest level of human decency and doing what I should have done years ago._

Aye, taking her away from Littlefinger and that... _knight_ he had attempted to marry Sansa to had barely begun to repay his debt to her. But rescuing her, riding and talking with her the last few days, providing for her like... like he was her fucking... like she could somehow be his... She had sat beside him last night, watching the fire together before retiring to their bedrolls. She had been so close he had become suddenly aware of every contour of her body, all the places she was nearly touching him. She looked at his face now, no trace of fear or revulsion, and smiled at him like a long lost friend, but last night she had brushed against him so tantalisingly that he had felt himself get hard in a way he never had when pinning her down to her soft feather bed all those years ago.

She had made it somehow easy to believe... But he had snapped at her and now she said she hated him... _She was trying to thank me, just as if I was one of those true knights she once loved so well. Better for her to remember what I am. Better for me._

He stood by the mouth of the cave, looking out into the dark forest, wanting to return into the warmth and blessed solitude, but knowing he should wait for her to come back. Whatever else he’d done (and what _had_ he done, really?) he had promised to return her safe to her uncle – promised her uncle, aye, but more importantly promised _her_ , and dog though he may be, he had never taken his promises lightly.

But the longer he waited, the angrier he got. She really was a stupid little bird, to be gone so long nursing her wounded pride over nothing more than harsh words. He’d have thought life in Littlefinger’s court would have shaken the naivety out of her, but apparently he had been wrong. What did she think was in these woods? Fluffy little rabbits and soft-eyed deer?

Unbidden, the memory of those savages Tyrion Lannister had brought to King’s Landing came into Sandor’s mind, but still he hesitated.

 _Whose wounded pride?_ he asked himself angrily, before pushing himself forwards, following Sansa’s trail.

*

Sansa tried to make herself small against the roots of the tree. Despite her anger, she hadn’t gone far from the cave, the weak light from their small fire flickering through the trees and casting faint shadows on the ground around her. So she heard when Sandor moved to come after her, the part of her that cringed back from the shadows thinking _At last!_ even as she hoped she was too well hidden for him to see her.

But no, the soft jingle of his chainmail got closer and closer until she knew he was standing right there, looking down on her as ever. She could see his expression in her mind’s eye, could almost _feel_ the burnt corner of his mouth twitching in disdain. Sansa buried her face deeper into her arms, knees drawn up close, muscles tensed and trembling. She couldn’t seem to stop crying, and she did not want him to see her like this.

“I hope for your sake you were lying about needing a piss,” he said roughly, “because otherwise you’ve made me wait all this time while you sit in your own filth feeling sorry for yourself.”

 _Go away go away go away_. But he did not, merely stood silently, his gaze pressing heavily on the curve of her back. For a moment she could hear nothing but her own pathetic sniffling, so quietly did he stand watching, before he huffed in irritation.

“Get up, girl,” he said, “it’s not safe out here.” And though his words were not threatening in any way, when he reached out to take hold of her upper arm, Sansa flinched away violently and pressed herself more tightly against the tree trunk. And began weeping for true. Big, noisy, grief-stricken sobs that made her body wrack and shake.

“Shit,” she heard him swear, heard him take two steps away, two steps back again, the sound of sharp metal being unsheathed and finally, the muffled thump and jangle as he sat down in the leaf mould at the base of the tree beside her.

“Calm yourself,” he said after a moment, though it sounded half-hearted, as though he neither thought the instruction useful nor likely to be heeded. But his words, his nearness, the sound of his voice, all _were_ comforting, in an absurdly contrary way. She suddenly felt very childish, for hitting him, for crying. _I dreamed and dreamed of him, and now he is here and I am upset because he is less than I thought he was. Stupid Sansa. Stupid, childish little girl. It should be enough that he has taken me away, but I wanted my own song and now here I am, embarrassing myself in front of him like this._

“You were right,” she said, the words coming strangled from her throat. “I am still just a suh-stupid little bird.”

She heard him shift uncomfortably. “Is that what this is about?”

“Petyr eh-educated me, made me take lessons with the muh-muh-maester, made me learn how to run a business, a _k-kingdom_ , I thought I was so clever...” the words were speaking themselves, tumbling out uncontrolled through the sobbing. “Not enough, though. Not clever _enough._ Not to stop my muh-marriage to Harry, and not to keep Petyr from my buh-bed. He waited patiently enough, but as soon as Tuh-Tyrion’s death was confirmed... It was just as Joffrey and Cersei always suh-said, I am nothing more than stupid little Sansa.”

There was silence again. All she could hear was her own hitching breath, the rustling of leaves in the wind. Sansa wiped her eyes and nose and raised her head hesitantly, trying to take deep, even breaths to bring the spasmodic heaving of her chest and shoulders under control. Sandor was not looking at her, and she did not know whether to feel grateful for that or not. He sat with his back against the tree trunk, staring out into the dark forest, his sword unsheathed and ready in his hand. Guarding her. She wished suddenly that she had not spoken. What desire would he have to hear of her trials? He was sitting with the burnt side of his face towards her, the scars rivened with shadow. What was her suffering in comparison to his?

“Littlefinger came to your bed?” he said then, and Sansa noticed the way his hand clenched and unclenched on the hilt of his sword.

“Yes,” she whispered, breath still hitching and gulping, feeling cold and sick and angry and defeated and tired. She remembered, unbidden, the way Sandor had thrown his white cloak to her in the training yard that day, to cover her nakedness. “Is it rape if the lady does not resist, do you think?”

He turned sharply to stare at her, grey eyes glittering in the dim light. “It doesn’t make me want to kill him any less,” he said.

Her eyes prickled with fresh tears, but she forced a smile, hoping it did not appear half as wooden as it felt. _Thank you_ did not feel quite right under the circumstances, and given what he had just said, and so she settled for a simple nod before the weight of his gaze boring into her became too much and she looked away.

“All men are false,” she said shakily, picking up a twig from the ground and scoring shapes with it in the mud. “All men scheme and lie and think only of how they might best satisfy their lust for power.”

At her side, Sandor laughed darkly, mirthlessly. “You’ve learnt a hard lesson.” He sounded almost sorry.

“Even my father was false to my mother,” she continued bitterly. “Where was his honour when he was making Jon with some other woman?” The twig snapped, and she looked back at Sandor, fixing him in place with her stare. “You are the only man I have ever met who has always been honest with me. A Hound will die for you, but never lie to you, remember?”

“Aye, I remember,” he grunted, raising himself up to standing once more until he towered over her. “But the Hound is dead.”

Sansa rose too, discreetly wiping her eyes again and brushing herself down, though she could feel from the damp patches on her breeches that she was mud-stained. “Nevertheless,” she said, straightening. She paused, then. Standing, she barely came to Sandor’s shoulder, and with his back to the cave and the campfire, he was little more than a massive, hulking shadow before her. “I’m sorry I hit you,” she said. “I was angry, but not with you.” __

She half expected him to laugh at her. It wasn’t as though she could cause him any harm, after all. _I wish I could see his face._

“Come,” was all he said in response, turning his back on her and leading the way back to the cave. And then, to her utter shock, he added, “I’ll tell you a story about Ned Stark while you warm yourself.”

*

Back in the cave, by the light of the fire, he could see clearly that she was shivering, but though her eyes were red-rimmed, her expression wan, at least she had stopped crying. He fucking hated crying, it was so self-defeating. The little wolf bitch had never indulged when he’d taken her across the riverlands, not even after her mother’s death, not even in a fit of childish temper, of which there’d been a few. He’d had a creeping suspicion, after a while, that her reaction to her family’s death was far from healthy, but that didn’t mean he wanted wailing. And after all, who was he to pass judgment on what was healthy?

Her sister, though... it hardly seemed fair that misery did not diminish her beauty. She had said just a minute ago that he was the only man ever to be honest with her, but he did not think she would like to hear how he wanted to fuck her right here and now on the dirty floor of the cave regardless, her face still wet with tears, having just confessed to her own ruin. _No, not ruin. Nothing could ruin her, not even Lord Petyr Fucking Baelish._ He could see that in the proud stiffness of her spine, the control she exerted over her expression.

_I resented her once for her innocence, so why am I not happier for its loss?_

“Here,” he said, passing her a wineskin, “drink.” He thought about offering her his cloak again, and hesitated. She had flinched from his touch in the forest. If he’d had a stag for every time a woman had shrunk back from him, he’d be a rich man by now, and even Sansa had always backed away as a child. She had seemed, oddly, to welcome his touch since he took her from the Gates of the Moon, though, and the thought of her returning to how she’d been before – however little it had to do with him – was more than he could bear. He’d rather not know.

So he took off his cloak and laid it beside her and said not a word. _Let her decide if she wants it or not._

“A story, you said,” she reminded him as he paced around restlessly, taking another delicate sip from the wineskin. “About my father?”

Sandor snorted, and reined himself in, and sat down opposite her. “You remember I told you of the Quiet Isle, and the man who is in charge there?”

“Elder Brother.”

“Yes. I had this story from him. I don’t know where he got it from, but he has a lot of friends, some of them powerful. So make of it what you will.”

Sandor did not know if the story was true. It made sense, given what he knew of Ned Stark, but ultimately he did not care. _She_ would, though. So he told her all he knew – the supposed truth behind Lyanna Stark’s kidnapping, the father of her bastard child, Ned Stark’s promise to raise him as his own.

When he was done, Sansa stared at him with huge blue eyes, her expression difficult to parse. “Jon is a _Targaryen_?” she finally asked.

“So it would seem.”

“And my father was not unfaithful.”

Sandor watched in silence as she looked down at her hands, fiddling aimlessly with a loose thread at the hem of her tunic.

“Lyanna... _chose_ to go with the Prince. She wasn’t kidnapped at all.”

Sandor stared at her, unsure whether to feel amused or incredulous. “Let me guess, you think it very romantic.”

Sansa smiled, a small sad thing, but he thought it reached her eyes. “I was thinking it, yes.”

He felt the burnt corner of his mouth twitch, but before he could say anything further she stood, and walked over to him, and bent, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“I know you would not like me to call you a true knight,” she said softly, “and in fact I would not want you to be one, because knights are beasts, just as you always said.” She paused, and touched light fingertips to his shoulder, before continuing, “But I hope you will allow me to call you a true friend.”

She had kissed him on the same cheek she had slapped him, the same cheek she had once touched in comfort. Sandor felt something break within him, and mend all at once.

“You can call me whatever you want, girl, so long as it isn’t ‘ser’ or ‘lord,’” he muttered.

“And you? Will you call me ‘little bird’? I... I would like it if you did. I didn’t mean what I said earlier.”

It was a stupid little name that he had first come up with as an insult, but of course it had come to mean so much more than that. As had she. He reached up to place his hand over hers where it still rested on his shoulder, thinking that he did not even deserve so much as her friendship.

“As you say, my lady,” he said, smirking as he looked up and met her faintly affronted expression. “Little bird,” he amended.

“You know,” she said as she returned back to her seat on the other side of the fire, “we each of us now know the other’s blackest secret.”

He still remembered the night he had drunkenly told her how he got his scars. Still did not know why he had done it. “Are we even now, then?” he asked.

She smiled wryly, a small quirk of the lips. “Of a sort, I suppose. You cannot leave my side again for fear I may tell the world you failed to get burned by dragon’s breath. But I cannot let you go for equally dire reasons.”

She was fingering the cloak he had left her as she said it. He watched her almost stroking the coarse weave, wondering if she was aware she was doing it.

“I won’t tell anyone, Sansa,” he said, voice low. She gave him a measured look, but did not demand that he give his word, merely nodded gravely before shaking out his cloak and standing to wrap herself in it.

They slept side by side on their bedrolls for warmth, as they had done every night since he found her again. Sansa fell almost immediately into the deep sleep of the exhausted, but Sandor lay for some minutes watching her face, before reaching out carefully and taking her hand in his. She sighed in her sleep, and when he awoke to the dawn several hours later, their hands were still joined, her small hand wrapped safe in his own.


	2. DVD Commentary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A DVD style commentary for this fic, written for the DVD Commentary Challenge over on sansa_sandor.livejournal.com

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** R for the commentary, because neither me nor ownsariver can keep it in our pants…  
>  **Warnings:** Rape. Discussion of sexual and emotional abuse.
> 
> DVD commentary in bold.

**_‘Because it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back, so shake it out’_ **

**This song will never not scream “survivor” to me.**

*

**First of all a note about the set up of this fic. lunar_art asked for Sansa slapping Sandor in anger, but I actually found it quite hard to think of a serious (i.e. non-humorous) situation in which Sansa would genuinely feel so angry that she would lose control to that extent. For me, pre-Vale Sansa is far too polite and/or cowed, and post-Vale Sansa will be almost painfully controlled as a result of her survival. Couple that with a post-QI Sandor, who will inevitably be gentled (at least a little), and I was struggling to come up with a realistic scenario. Hence why I took it to such an extreme.**

“What are you doing?”

The words were annoyed, growled at her from across the small campfire, and when Sansa looked up his eyes were a stony grey.

“Mending your tunic,” she said softly, taken aback. “As I can’t cook or hunt, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m to stay away from the horses, there really is nothing else I can do to help.” **A little nod to Northern Lights and Midnight Sun ;)**

Sandor snorted and turned away, ducking down as he went to the back of the cave where the ceiling was low before returning with his whetstone. “Your job isn’t to _help_ , girl. Your job is to sit quietly and look pretty until I can deliver you safely back to your uncle Blackfish.”

Sansa blinked, stung. She had not _been_ Sansa again until five days ago, when Sandor Clegane had appeared at her wedding and whisked her away in the confusion. **This is actually possibly my sekrit!really!unlikely!desire for a reunion between these two. I mean, it would be so romantic and so ironic at the same time!** Alayne was well accustomed to being useful, and the reminder that Sansa was supposed to be a lady – and therefore ultimately useless – was strangely unwelcome.

“I... I’m sorry if I have offended you,” she tried. “I was merely trying to find a way to express my thanks for all you have done for me.”

 **This paragraph originally began with what is now the final sentence. Because my beta is awesome and sharp as dragonglass <3 **Sansa frowned uncertainly; she couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. She remembered well enough that he had not always spoken gently to her, of course, but that had been before. Since he had rescued her from Littlefinger and Harry the Heir, Sandor had actually been quite nice to her **heh heh, that originally said “gallant” instead of “nice” but ownsariver’s head exploded at “Sandor” and “gallant” in the same sentence, so I changed it for her** – as nice as he was ever like to get, at the least – making her as comfortable as he could both on horseback and when they stopped to camp, conversing with her pleasantly enough about where he had been since they last saw one another. Oh he was still blunt as a tourney sword, his language as coarse as ever, but the bitterness that had once made his eyes so terrifying to look upon, the _meanness_ he had sometimes been wont to throw at her, had gone. So why was he suddenly being so prickly?

One of the first things he had said to her – as she had retreated behind a gorse bush to change out of her wedding gown, his broad back just a few feet away **hiding the suspicious bulge in the front of his breeches** – was that the Hound was dead, and Sansa had been rather pleased for the changes it had wrought in him. Why, he was not nearly so frightening as she had once thought, that bitterness and rage in his eyes replaced with small glimpses of something Sansa might have been tempted to call warmth, in another man. And after he had fastened his cloak about her shoulders that first night when a fire was too great a risk, Sansa had even begun to wonder if it was normal to find such horrific burn scars... appealing. There must be a reason she had dreamt of him all these years, after all. **Beta’s comment: “ah, no, Sansa sweet – that’s pure sex appeal… and a large cock.”**

But now he was staring at her in something that looked like irritation, the burned side of his mouth twitching so that it looked as though he was sneering at her, and it made her want to shrink away like the scared child she had once been.

“Express your thanks? You’re still just a stupid little bird, aren’t you?”

**Gah, it was genuinely an unpleasant experience writing Sandor being so callous to Sansa when I knew what she had been through and how she was going to react. Originally, I had intended that he would somehow end up calling her a whore, and that would be what triggered her outburst, but in the end that was a step too far for me to stomach, so I went down a slightly… subtler… route.**

Sansa’s breath froze in her throat. He had not spoken to her like that since King’s Landing. It was almost as if he had heard her thoughts. _But how could he have?_ She remembered all at once that he had often seemed to possess an uncanny ability to peer inside her head and see what she was about. Funny how some of those memories only came bubbling to the surface when faced with him again, for all the time she had spent thinking on him. **Romanticising him, you mean :) I think she’s going to get one hell of a shock when they meet again for real.** She saw herself for a moment as if from above – more like a dream than a memory – a small, frightened girl standing before her king in the practice yard as he held a loaded crossbow to her face and jeered at her dumbstruck responses. **And this here would be the ‘subtler’ route. Despite the fact that Sansa has been sexually abused, she’s also been emotionally abused (for several years at this point), and I think that’s something that gets glossed over quite a lot. It has its own consequences.**

Blinking the strange vision away, Sansa glanced up at his face as Sandor sat down across the fire from her. His eyes seemed to glitter in the firelight. _In anger?_ Was he glaring at her? His words rang in her head, _stupid little bird._ **Everything from “sansa’s breath froze” to here was added after the beta. I did not have an easy time of writing this story, and it got to the point where I felt like I was going blind from staring at it so much. That’s where ownsariver comes in – she’s such an awesome beta that she always pins down where the problem is, which in this case was the lack of build-up and lack of clarity about what exactly Sansa was upset about.** She felt pinned, a butterfly in Robert’s collection. Stripped bare as Joffrey had once made her. No one had ever called Alayne stupid. _Ever_. But she was Sansa again now, and Sansa had never been anything more than a frightened, naïve little pawn, used by everyone for their own gain and too stupid to see it until it was too late. **Riffing off of Sansa’s self-made identity split in the novels. I don’t think she will necessarily want to be Sansa again, until she learns how to integrate Alayne’s strength. I like to think that a certain someone who knows something about dual identities will help her with that.**

 _I’m sorry._ She could feel the words forming on her tongue, tight and small, a distantly familiar reflex. But then she frowned and clamped her jaw down on them, straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and stared at him coolly.

“Please don’t call me stupid,” she said. “If you don’t want me to mend your clothes, that is all you need say.” **And here the process of integration begins, but that’s not to say it’ll be easy or painless.**

“Whatever you say, _my lady_ ,” Sandor snorted again, looking darkly amused, and started scraping at his sword with the whetstone, shaking his head. Sansa laid her sewing down and watched him, waiting. For what, she did not know, but the longer she waited the emptier she felt. He had smiled at her last night as the hare had roasted on the spit, and it had made her feel warm from top to toe. He had ridden back into her life and taken her away from her captors and she had tried to remind herself that life was not a song but the whole thing had been so like something from one of the stories she had once loved that she had truly started to believe... _wanted_ to believe... **But he’s a real man, sweetling, not the one from your dreams. Sometimes he’ll act irrationally *cuddles her gently* This is another point of beta intervention. This paragraph originally just ended “and now this” and the following paragraph didn’t exist. Ownsariver pointed out that “and now this” is a crappy and vague way to end that train of thought. I like it rough.**

And hadn’t she suffered enough? Tormented by Joffrey, forced into marriage not once but twice, forced to accept… all manner of indignities at Petyr’s hands. Forced to lie still and quiet and not cry. Forced to endure his fury, rising up like a storm, when all she _would_ do was lie still and quiet and not cry, and failed utterly to be Catelyn Tully. **Inspired by a completely unrelated comment that came out in beta. Because ownsariver’s and my brains were brought from the same brain shop.** _You stupid girl, you are nothing like her._ Life was not a song, but she had started to believe that Sandor could be her unlikely champion.

 _Did I misjudge him? Did I misjudge everything?_ She was sixteen now, a woman grown and well-educated, not the stupid child who had fled King’s Landing by putting her life in the hands of a fool. And yet... she was Sansa again, and Alayne no longer, and perhaps it had always been Alayne who was clever and brave and not Sansa at all. Petyr had always made her be Sansa in bed, after all. He must have realised that she was the weak one. The _only_ thing Sansa had in her favour was that she was a lady, and what good was that when her champion thought her just as worthless as her tormentors had?

“Why are you ruining it?” she whispered **pure GoT Sansa peeking through there, and done because I wanted the reader to _feel_ how small she feels right then** , voice so small it was lost under the _scape, scrape_ of the whetstone. Unbidden, her eyes filled with tears, and that made her angry **because I rarely find weepy!Sansa IC, and if she cries too much it loses its impact**. _I really am just a stupid little bird, stupid little Sansa, good for nothing but looking pretty and providing some man with a claim to my home._ She stood abruptly and walked to the mouth of the cave, desperate to fill her lungs with clean night air, to get away, _away_.

Iron fingers caught her by the wrist and forced her around, and a deep voice rasped at her, “Where do you think you’re going?” **Purposefully harking back to KL!Sandor here, because that’s just Sansa’s frame of mind right now. She’s pissed at him, so that’s what she sees.**

 _Away, away from you._ “I need to make water,” she muttered, turning her face so that he would not see her tears.

He did not release her, but reached up with his free hand to grip her chin and turn her face up to his. Just as if she was still that stupid little girl, trapped amongst her enemies in King’s Landing.

“ _Release me,_ ” she hissed, filled with a sudden rage, a rage that was only fuelled by her humiliation when the tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks, Sandor watching their progress with a blank expression. For a moment she thought that he would not heed her, but then he let her go all at once as though burned, mouth twitching. **But despite how she feels right now, Sandor _has_ changed since KL.**

She stepped back from him, his overwhelming nearness, before spinning away and striding towards the trees with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Don’t go far,” he rasped, and the slight hint of confusion and concern in his voice made her turn right back, propelled by a red wave of fury **I think we’ve probably all been made _even angrier_ by a loved one not being psychic enough to understand why we’re pissed in the first place :) I hope that came through, because I wanted to show that while Sansa’s rage is perfectly understandable, Sandor isn’t really at fault here. He was a bit insensitive, yes, but nothing OTT. It’s Sansa’s baggage, and the fact that she’s yet to process it, that’s causing the rift**. How _dare_ he? How _dare_ he act the gallant once more, worrying over her safety, after the way he had just spoken to her – did he think she was _stupid?_ Yes of course he did! He’d said so himself, had he not? _You’re still just a stupid little bird, aren’t you?_

“Little bird-” he began as she approached him once more, frowning slightly, and it was too much. Sansa struck him, putting everything into it, the palm of her hand landing hard across his good cheek. And when that did not appease the fire in her chest she struck him again. **Two-fer! Even though Sandor isn’t really at fault, I won’t lie and say that wasn’t satisfying *g***

He stood rooted to the spot, not even moving to stop her, staring at her with a queer expression on his face, and Sansa stared right back, boiling with fury and panting from the exertion, her hand stinging. His cheek had turned a livid pink from her blows, she saw, with a savage satisfaction she had never felt before.

“I am not your _little bird,_ ” she said, voice soft but filled with contempt. And then, when that still did not feel good enough, “I hate you.” **Beta’s comment: “heart breaks for Sandor…Come, let me fuck you happy again…”**

**When I first wrote this section, it kept popping in and out of present tense. In the end I settled on past tense because I wanted the story to be firmly rooted in a feeling of reality. Present tense can make a story feel more poetic, but also more dream-like, and even though at times I wondered if that would work better, I eventually decided that I wanted it to feel more real, more raw, and that past tense would give it that feeling.**

*

Sandor stood and watched her stride away into the trees for the second time, stunned into inaction. He had been on the receiving end of many an insult in his time, foul names his opponents had flung at him, the sneering of whores. But the look in his little bird’s eyes as she had struck him, the calm, cold tone of her voice as she told him with the utmost sincerity that she hated him, and the way some deep part of him had clenched in fear and panic at her words... that experience was entirely foreign before now.

**In the beginning this story was going to be entirely from Sansa’s POV, because I’m a firm believer that a story about recovering from abuse should be first and foremost about the survivor. But it got to the point where Sandor’s actions were a little inexplicable without hearing his reasoning, hence the two sections from his POV.**

The skin of his cheek prickled with heat in the cold night air, a shadow of where her hand had been. He fancied he could feel the line each long finger had left on his face. Had a woman ever struck him before? Brienne, of course, though she barely counted; **ILU Brienne, don’t listen to him!** Cersei, before he had learnt to guard his tongue and keep his opinions to himself **I have a bit of a backstory here, because the Sandor/Cersei relationship just intrigues me – basically I think she liked to lord it over him how beautiful she was, just to see him explode in fury and yet not be able to do anything about it because she’s a girl and he can’t hit her. I think young!Sandor learnt a lot of his verbal jousting with Cersei, because he couldn’t take up a sword against her and take it out on her that way. And I think he lost a lot of the time, because Cersei was older and better educated. And then I think he learnt to hold his tongue *g***. But the touch that was burned most brightly into his memory was the timid comfort offered by a girl on the worst night of his life, a girl who had somehow looked beyond the knife he had held to her throat, and given him her compassion. The same girl who had no doubt left a red mark in the exact same place she had touched him then, as though burning away the tenderness of that memory. **Some parallels you cleverly plan, and some just pop out in the writing. This one is the latter, but I’m still inordinately please with it :)** The same girl who had just now looked at him with such loathing as she took back the faint glimpse of absolution he had fought through the last four years to have a second chance at earning.

And what had he done, exactly? He was tired from the day’s riding, hungry from the meagre dinner he had been able to provide, and the sight of her sitting there mending his things, a small smile on her face as she hummed quietly to herself, had made him short with her. It was too close. Too close to the hopeless fantasies he had been entertaining ever since he saw the look of relief on her face in that brief, unguarded moment when he’d first broken into her chambers. Too close, and too far away, and so very fucking bitter. **From “too close” to here we’ve got more additions coming out of the first beta, because this section was also a bit vague and crap. Ownsaaaariiiiiiveeeeeer ILU <3 <3 <3** But he had said worse in King’s Landing, and if she had held _that_ against him he did not think she would have been so happy to see him back at the Gates of the Moon. _Aye, but was she truly, dog? Remember the bread riots? She was happy to see you then, too. Wasn’t really you, though, was it? She would have been happy to see the headless ghost of her dead father if it meant escaping Lollys Stokeworth’s fate._ Gratitude was not the same as... whatever it was he had come here to get from her (Elder Brother had called it redemption; the Blackfish honour; Brienne had looked through him with those enormous blue eyes and named it forgiveness). Yet gratitude had been given nonetheless, and it had galled him for not being the other.

 _The Hound may be dead, but I am still nothing more than a cringing dog_ , he told himself. _I don’t deserve her forgiveness merely for bringing myself up to the lowest level of human decency and doing what I should have done years ago._ **Makes me cringe a little because it’s almost word-for-word the same as a passage from The Lady of the Gift. I did try and fiddle with the wording, but couldn’t get the cadence right, and then I’d just had enough.**

Aye, taking her away from Littlefinger and that... _knight_ he had attempted to marry Sansa to had barely begun to repay his debt to her. But rescuing her, riding and talking with her the last few days, providing for her like... like he was her fucking... like she could somehow be his... She had sat beside him last night, watching the fire together before retiring to their bedrolls. She had been so close he had become suddenly aware of every contour of her body, all the places she was nearly touching him. She looked at his face now, no trace of fear or revulsion, and smiled at him like a long lost friend, but last night she had brushed against him so tantalisingly that he had felt himself get hard in a way he never had when pinning her down to her soft feather bed all those years ago. **I do not subscribe to the theory that Sandor intended to rape her. Maybe he _thought_ that’s what he intended, but deep down? No. He would never and could never have done it. I just don’t think it was her body he was after, that night.**

She had made it somehow easy to believe... But he had snapped at her and now she said she hated him... _She was trying to thank me, just as if I was one of those true knights she once loved so well. Better for her to remember what I am. Better for me._ **:’( I make myself so sad for them sometimes. But then again, I always write happy endings, so it’ll all be ok in the end :)**

He stood by the mouth of the cave, looking out into the dark forest, wanting to return into the warmth and blessed solitude, but knowing he should wait for her to come back. Whatever else he’d done (and what _had_ he done, really?) he had promised to return her safe to her uncle – promised her uncle, aye, but more importantly promised _her_ , and dog though he may be, he had never taken his promises lightly. **This was worded so awkwardly before beta: “…but more importantly promised _her_ ,** **and Sandor Clegane had never taken his promises lightly” *facepalm* Seriously, I love my beta.**

But the longer he waited, the angrier he got. She really was a stupid little bird, to be gone so long nursing her wounded pride over nothing more than harsh words. He’d have thought life in Littlefinger’s court would have shaken the naivety out of her, but apparently he had been wrong. What did she think was in these woods? Fluffy little rabbits and soft-eyed deer? **Another nod to Northern Lights *g* Basically ownsariver just writes Sandor so well I will completely and shamelessly plagiarise her whenever possible. Also because ownsariver owns ME.**

Unbidden, the memory of those savages Tyrion Lannister had brought to King’s Landing came into Sandor’s mind, but still he hesitated.

 _Whose wounded pride?_ he asked himself angrily, before pushing himself forwards, following Sansa’s trail.

*

Sansa tried to make herself small against the roots of the tree. Despite her anger, she hadn’t gone far from the cave, the weak light from their small fire flickering through the trees and casting faint shadows on the ground around her. So she heard when Sandor moved to come after her, the part of her that cringed back from the shadows thinking _At last!_ even as she hoped she was too well hidden for him to see her. **A bit of teenage!Moony there :) “I’m going to storm off in dramatic fashion so you know how pissed I am, but I’m not stupid enough to truly run off into the dark and unknown woods!” And also... that idea of sometimes people run away to see if you’ll follow. Of course we all know Sandor will follow.**

But no, the soft jingle of his chainmail got closer and closer until she knew he was standing right there, looking down on her as ever. She could see his expression in her mind’s eye, could almost _feel_ the burnt corner of his mouth twitching in disdain. Sansa buried her face deeper into her arms, knees drawn up close, muscles tensed and trembling. She couldn’t seem to stop crying, and she did not want him to see her like this.

“I hope for your sake you were lying about needing a piss,” he said roughly, “because otherwise you’ve made me wait all this time while you sit in your own filth feeling sorry for yourself.” **Ownsariver thought this line was hilarious *g* Part of me agrees with her, but it was also really kind of hard to write, because my poor baby is suffering and he’s being all gruff and crude to her *wibble***

 _Go away go away go away_. But he did not, merely stood silently, his gaze pressing heavily on the curve of her back. For a moment she could hear nothing but her own pathetic sniffling, so quietly did he stand watching, before he huffed in irritation.

“Get up, girl,” he said, “it’s not safe out here.” And though his words were not threatening in any way, when he reached out to take hold of her upper arm, Sansa flinched away violently and pressed herself more tightly against the tree trunk. And began weeping for true. Big, noisy, grief-stricken sobs that made her body wrack and shake.

“Shit,” **the penny drops** she heard him swear, heard him take two steps away, two steps back again, the sound of sharp metal being unsheathed and finally, the muffled thump and jangle as he sat down in the leaf mould at the base of the tree beside her.

“Calm yourself,” he said after a moment, though it sounded half-hearted, as though he neither thought the instruction useful nor likely to be heeded. But his words, his nearness, the sound of his voice, all _were_ comforting, in an absurdly contrary way. She suddenly felt very childish, for hitting him, for crying. ***more wibbling* because of course she isn’t being childish at all (if only), but we’re inside her head and right now she’s a pretty unreliable narrator** _I dreamed and dreamed of him, and now he is here and I am upset because he is less_ **ouch – reference to the idea that she will undoubtedly end up romanticising his memory if she keeps (day)dreaming about him, and that the real thing will come as a bit of a shock** _than I thought he was. Stupid Sansa. Stupid, childish little girl. It should be enough that he has taken me away, but I wanted my own song and now here I am, embarrassing myself in front of him like this._

“You were right,” she said, the words coming strangled from her throat. “I am still just a suh-stupid little bird.”

**Soooooo... I was reading Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (** [ **http://the-moonmoth.livejournal.com/149797.html** ](http://the-moonmoth.livejournal.com/149797.html) **) while I was writing this, and while there is so much to admire in his writing (oh so much) one powerful image that has really stayed with me is the scene in which a child has an uncontrollable crying fit. It was the most realistic crying fit I’ve ever read, and it was all down to the “sound” of it – it just _sounded_ so right. Here’s an excerpt...**

**“You’re going to be suh-suh-sent _away_ ,” wails Sophie, almost accusingly. […] “I _told_ him, Miss. I _told_ him I luh-luh-love you.”**

**So I shamelessly borrowed his technique. Copying is the highest form of flattery, after all.**

She heard him shift uncomfortably. “Is that what this is about?”

“Petyr eh-educated me, made me take lessons with the muh-muh-maester, made me learn how to run a business, a _k-kingdom_ , I thought I was so clever...” the words were speaking themselves, tumbling out uncontrolled through the sobbing. “Not enough, though. Not clever _enough._ Not to stop my muh-marriage to Harry, and not to keep Petyr from my buh-bed. He waited patiently enough, but as soon as Tuh-Tyrion’s death was confirmed... It was just as Joffrey and Cersei always suh-said, I am nothing more than stupid little Sansa.”

**…looking at it again now, though, I’m not sure I got the rhythm right. (To all you non-writers out there: yes, getting the placement of phonetic sobbing sounds correct is serious business!)**

There was silence again. All she could hear was her own hitching breath, the rustling of leaves in the wind. Sansa wiped her eyes and nose and raised her head hesitantly, trying to take deep, even breaths to bring the spasmodic heaving of her chest and shoulders under control. Sandor was not looking at her, and she did not know whether to feel grateful for that or not. He sat with his back against the tree trunk, staring out into the dark forest, his sword unsheathed and ready in his hand. Guarding her. She wished suddenly that she had not spoken. What desire would he have to hear of her trials? He was sitting with the burnt side of his face towards her, the scars rivened with shadow. What was her suffering in comparison to his? **Unreliable narrator again. Although one thing I love about these two is their depths of compassion for each other. I don’t think Sansa especially would ever be able to compare her own suffering to Sandor’s, and I can see him feeling the same in reverse after his QI therapy time-out.**

“Littlefinger came to your bed?” he said then, and Sansa noticed the way his hand clenched and unclenched on the hilt of his sword.

“Yes,” she whispered, breath still hitching and gulping, feeling cold and sick and angry and defeated and tired. She remembered, unbidden, the way Sandor had thrown his white cloak to her in the training yard that day, to cover her nakedness. **Nice obvious difference in the treatment Sansa has received from Petyr and Sandor.** “Is it rape if the lady does not resist, do you think?” **I was struggling not to make this statement and Sandor’s subsequent response sound too modern in sentiment. That said, I do not subscribe to moral relativism (the argument that certain attitudes are ok to include uncritically in our modern writing because those attitudes are ok – or at least normative – in the time-period/culture we’re writing about). In a medievalish world, Sansa might not consider Petyr’s actions to be rape, but as a modern author writing about rape for a modern audience, I believe I have a responsibility to provide textual criticism of the act (and if I couldn’t have done it, I wouldn’t have included the rape). Perhaps that’s resulted in a slightly “anachronistic” (in adverted commas because this isn’t a history book) exchange here, but that’s a necessary sacrifice to be the responsible writer that I want to be.**

He turned sharply to stare at her, grey eyes glittering in the dim light. “It doesn’t make me want to kill him any less,” he said.

Her eyes prickled with fresh tears, but she forced a smile, hoping it did not appear half as wooden as it felt. _Thank you_ did not feel quite right under the circumstances, and given what he had just said, **‘Thank you for offering to kill him’ – what’s so wrong with that, Sansa?** and so she settled for a simple nod before the weight of his gaze boring into her became too much and she looked away.

“All men are false,” she said shakily, picking up a twig from the ground and scoring shapes with it in the mud. “All men scheme and lie and think only of how they might best satisfy their lust for power.” **I don’t think bitterness is ever going to be a character trait for her, but I can certainly see it welling over in occasional moments in extremis.**

At her side, Sandor laughed darkly, mirthlessly. “You’ve learnt a hard lesson.” He sounded almost sorry. **Of course he is! Silly girl.**

“Even my father was false to my mother,” she continued bitterly. **I always hoped that this transition to talking about her father was a smooth one, but I’ve never been entirely convinced, and I think I possibly could have worked on the ‘father’ theme a bit more with Petyr to give another angle as to why her mind might go here. Ah, retrospect. It came originally from trying to think how Sandor would try to bring her out of this state, and my personal desire for him to try to cheer her up. What would cheer Sansa up more than a story? And what more than a _true_ story? And one that can break that bitter shell that isn’t really _her_.** “Where was his honour when he was making Jon with some other woman?” The twig snapped **allegorically, of course *snerk*** , and she looked back at Sandor, fixing him in place with her stare. “You are the only man I have ever met who has always been honest with me. A Hound will die for you, but never lie to you, remember?”

“Aye, I remember,” he grunted, raising himself up to standing once more until he towered over her. “But the Hound is dead.”

Sansa rose too, discreetly wiping her eyes again and brushing herself down, though she could feel from the damp patches on her breeches that she was mud-stained. “Nevertheless,” she said, straightening. She paused, then. Standing, she barely came to Sandor’s shoulder, and with his back to the cave and the campfire, he was little more than a massive, hulking shadow before her. “I’m sorry I hit you,” she said. “I was angry, but not with you.” **Such impeccable manners.**

She half expected him to laugh at her. It wasn’t as though she could cause him any harm, after all. _I wish I could see his face._

“Come,” was all he said in response, turning his back on her and leading the way back to the cave. And then, to her utter shock, he added, “I’ll tell you a story about Ned Stark while you warm yourself.”

*

Back in the cave, by the light of the fire, he could see clearly that she was shivering, but though her eyes were red-rimmed, her expression wan, at least she had stopped crying. He fucking hated crying, it was so self-defeating. **Another Sandorish comment that I toyed with removing, due to its harshness towards poor Sansa. It really isn’t fair of him to think that. But then, I also think it’s IC – I can’t imagine he’d be particularly comfortable with a crying woman – and at least he doesn’t say it out loud! The thing about this kind of fic, for me, is that it should be a comforting and possibly cathartic experience for the reader – yes, really bad things happen sometimes, but Sandor was there for Sansa and he was decent towards her when she needed him to be, and in that, there’s something restorative for the spirit (whether you have personal experience of sexual assault or not). Part of that comfort for me is keeping Sandor IC and therefore retaining some of that ‘rough around the edges’ attitude – he’s big and mean and tough, but he still thinks what happened to her is wrong; he still cares and wants to make it better. And implicitly in that is the promise that Sansa will never have to suffer that kind of thing again, because now she has a protector who will gut a man before he lets him put a finger on her.** The little wolf bitch had never indulged when he’d taken her across the riverlands, not even after her mother’s death, not even in a fit of childish temper, of which there’d been a few. He’d had a creeping suspicion, after a while, that her reaction to her family’s death was far from healthy, but that didn’t mean he wanted wailing. And after all, who was he to pass judgment on what was healthy?

Her sister, though... it hardly seemed fair that misery did not diminish her beauty. **I felt a bit squicky about this, but being a bit of a canon whore, I kind of had to, since Tyrion mentions how her grief makes her more beautiful in KL. Also, Sandor luuuuurves her, so she’ll always be beautiful to him :)** She had said just a minute ago that he was the only man ever to be honest with her, but he did not think she would like to hear how he wanted to fuck her right here and now on the dirty floor of the cave regardless, her face still wet with tears, having just confessed to her own ruin. _No, not ruin._ **Good boy.** _Nothing could ruin her, not even Lord Petyr Fucking Baelish._ He could see that in the proud stiffness of her spine, the control she exerted over her expression.

 _I resented her once for her innocence, so why am I not happier for its loss?_ **Be careful what you wish for, and all that.**

“Here,” he said, passing her a wineskin, “drink.” He thought about offering her his cloak again, and hesitated. She had flinched from his touch in the forest. If he’d had a stag for every time a woman had shrunk back from him, he’d be a rich man by now, and even Sansa had always backed away as a child. She had seemed, oddly, to welcome his touch since he took her from the Gates of the Moon, though, and the thought of her returning to how she’d been before – however little it had to do with him – was more than he could bear. He’d rather not know.

So he took off his cloak and laid it beside her and said not a word. _Let her decide if she wants it or not._ **megs0226 and I have had a number of discussions over the past few months about rape and consent both in fic and the fandom in general. She pointed out to me that of all Sansa’s potential partners in the books, Sandor is the only one to listen to her wishes (when he left her behind on the night of the Blackwater). I think that _that_ act – the idea of consent trumping force – is going to be so important for their future relationship, and I tried to reflect a little of that here.**

“A story, you said,” she reminded him as he paced around restlessly, taking another delicate sip from the wineskin. “About my father?”

Sandor snorted, and reined himself in, and sat down opposite her. “You remember I told you of the Quiet Isle, and the man who is in charge there?”

“Elder Brother.”

“Yes. I had this story from him. I don’t know where he got it from, but he has a lot of friends, some of them powerful. So make of it what you will.”

Sandor did not know if the story was true. It made sense, given what he knew of Ned Stark, but ultimately he did not care. **No, I do not think Sandor admired Ned the man (Ned the warrior, maybe) – tbh I think Sandor would have thought Ned was a complete moron, the way he acted in KL.** _She_ would, though. So he told her all he knew – the supposed truth behind Lyanna Stark’s kidnapping, the father of her bastard child, Ned Stark’s promise to raise him as his own.

When he was done, Sansa stared at him with huge blue eyes, her expression difficult to parse. “Jon is a _Targaryen_?” she finally asked.

“So it would seem.”

“And my father was not unfaithful.”

Sandor watched in silence as she looked down at her hands, fiddling aimlessly with a loose thread at the hem of her tunic.

“Lyanna... _chose_ to go with the Prince. She wasn’t kidnapped at all.”

Sandor stared at her, unsure whether to feel amused or incredulous. “Let me guess, you think it very romantic.”

Sansa smiled, a small sad thing, but he thought it reached her eyes. “I was thinking it, yes.” **I know I wrote it, but I seriously want to draw stupid pink hearts around Sansa just here. Oh my bb! So horribly traumatised, but still such a beautiful heart. If she can still appreciate romance and stories, then we know she hasn’t completely lost herself to bitterness. And being able to show this was the whole point of the awkward transition above about her father.**

He felt the burnt corner of his mouth twitch, but before he could say anything further she stood, and walked over to him, and bent, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. **And maybe even Sandor can come to appreciate a bit of romance too, despite his instinct to sneer at her ;)**

“I know you would not like me to call you a true knight,” she said softly, “and in fact I would not want you to be one, because knights are beasts, just as you always said.” She paused, and touched light fingertips to his shoulder, before continuing, “But I hope you will allow me to call you a true friend.” **More important to her now than knighs. Let’s call her a ‘mature romantic’...**

She had kissed him on the same cheek she had slapped him, the same cheek she had once touched in comfort. Sandor felt something break within him, and mend all at once.

“You can call me whatever you want, girl, so long as it isn’t ‘ser’ or ‘lord,’” he muttered. **Because he might be goo inside, but he’ll be damned if he shows it.**

“And you? Will you call me ‘little bird’? I... I would like it if you did. I didn’t mean what I said earlier.”

It was a stupid little name that he had first come up with as an insult, but of course it had come to mean so much more than that. As had she. He reached up to place his hand over hers where it still rested on his shoulder, thinking that he did not even deserve so much as her friendship.

“As you say, my lady,” he said, smirking as he looked up and met her faintly affronted expression. “Little bird,” he amended. ***cringe* I just never quite feel comfortable writing humour.**

“You know,” she said as she returned back to her seat on the other side of the fire, “we each of us now know the other’s blackest secret.”

He still remembered the night he had drunkenly told her how he got his scars. Still did not know why he had done it. “Are we even now, then?” he asked.

She smiled wryly, a small quirk of the lips. “Of a sort, I suppose. You cannot leave my side again for fear I may tell the world you failed to get burned by dragon’s breath. But I cannot let you go for equally dire reasons.” **She offers…**

She was fingering the cloak he had left her as she said it. He watched her almost stroking the coarse weave, wondering if she was aware she was doing it.

“I won’t tell anyone, Sansa,” he said, voice low. **…he accepts.** She gave him a measured look, but did not demand that he give his word, merely nodded gravely before shaking out his cloak and standing to wrap herself in it. **…and then she accepts as well.**

They slept side by side on their bedrolls for warmth, as they had done every night since he found her again. Sansa fell almost immediately into the deep sleep of the exhausted, but Sandor lay for some minutes watching her face, before reaching out carefully and taking her hand in his. **I had originally intended to make this a proper snuggling scene, with actual cuddling, but then… consent issues. She’s asleep, having just spoken about something awful, and him invading her personal space without permission felt all kinds of wrong. So hands. I think it works just as well, if not more so.** She sighed in her sleep, and when he awoke to the dawn several hours later, their hands were still joined, her small hand wrapped safe in his own. **Sometimes I suck at endings. I like to think this is not one of those times :)**

**Thank you for reading this far, if you’ve made it. It’s not quite over yet, though! As there have been some recent discussions over rape and how it should/should not be depicted in media, I thought it might be interesting to share with you my own personal rules of writing about rape. In the interests of full disclosure, I have never been raped nor subjected to sexual assault. And I’m certainly not saying this is the only way to write about it. Discussion and questions are welcome in the comments.**

**So, my personal rules…**

**1) the rape is off-screen and later spoken of or thought about non-gratuitously. The reason for this comes back to my desire to be a responsible writer – there is a 100% chance that at some point, someone who has been raped will read this story. Probably (sadly) more than one person. And even for those of us who have never been raped or assaulted, we still live with the threat of it. _It’s a sensitive subject._ It should be treated with the respect and dignity of survivors in mind. As a writer, I am constantly asking myself ‘why am I writing about x? what am I trying to show here?’ If there’s no good answer, I re-examine my creative decisions. For me, there has yet to be a compelling reason to write an on-screen rape scene.**

**2) the rape is always textually condemned and the consequences for the survivor at least hinted at. It’s never a neutral act, a plot device, or a throwaway piece of “characterisation”. It’s a real event in a person’s life, from which there are consequences. Again, this comes back to respect for the survivors in my readership.**

**3) the survivor of the rape is the main character in the storyline of the rape. It’s not about her saviour, though saviours are often a nice thing to have. It’s about _her._ I’ll repeat – rape is not a plot device, and it should never be there solely to provide angst for another character.**

**Okay, NOW I’m done! I hope you enjoyed my commentary :)**


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